- "There is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks
his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
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- Jesus was talking about Satan in that famous passage
from John 8:44. Yet he could have been describing gun prohibitionists,
a group that lies more fluently and shamelessly than any other in public
life.
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- Take Joe Lockhart. In the July 31 Washington Post, Bill
Clintonís former flack pretended to offer a moderate new approach
to gun control. But his "new" approach smells as fresh as a year-old
carton of eggs.
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- Lockhart started on a humble note. Indeed, he has plenty
to be humble about. Inspired by polls showing that gun control would be
a key issue for two-thirds of U.S. voters in the 2000 election, Democrats
trumpeted their hostility to firearms.
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- "I think they should be banned, yes," said
Al Gore to Larry King on Sept. 16, 2000. "These semiautomatic handguns
Ö they really have no place in our society."
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- Americans responded by joining the National Rifle Association
in record numbers, swelling its ranks to 4.3 million by year-end. More
than half of U.S. voters stayed home on Election Day, but almost 19 out
of 20 licensed hunters who were registered to vote made it to the polls,
according to the Congressional Sportsmenís Foundation.
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- "I believed in the issue and thought it was good
politics," Lockhart admitted. "Put simply, I got it wrong."
Lockhart now concedes that "gun control cost Al Gore the presidency
and the Democrats control of the House and Senate."
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- So whatís a Democrat to do?
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- According to Lockhart, they should abandon their radical
anti-gun stance and embrace a "third way" ñ a compromise
that respects gun rights while "supporting common-sense gun safety
laws."
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- How reasonable! Yet, on closer inspection, Lockhartís
"third way" gives off an aroma strangely redolent of the snake
oil that gun prohibitionists have been peddling for decades.
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- Nineteenth-century British socialists would have called
Lockhartís strategy "Fabian," after the Roman general
Fabius Cunctator ñ Fabius the Delayer. When Hannibal invaded Italy
in the third century B.C., the Romans were too weak to beat him in open
battle. So Fabius wore Hannibal down through small attacks.
-
- Renouncing open revolution, Englandís Fabian Society
likewise pushed for small "reforms," designed to move England
step by step toward socialism. The gun ban movement in America has long
followed a Fabian strategy. "Weíre going to take this one step
at a time, and the first step is necessarily ñ given the political
realities ñ going to be very modest," said Handgun Control
Inc. founder Nelson T. "Pete" Shields to The New Yorker on July
26, 1976.
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- The first step, said Shields, would be "to slow
down the increasing number of handguns being produced and sold in this
country." The second would be "to get handguns registered,"
while "the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns
and all handgun ammunition Ö totally illegal" for ordinary citizens.
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- Sarah Brady appears to share her predecessorís
radical agenda. "To me, the only reason for guns in civilian hands
is for sporting purposes," she told the Tampa Tribune.
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- Lockhartís "third way" is an old Fabian
trick.
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- In the May 23, 1999 New York Times, David E. Rosenbaum
argued that there had once been two "extremes" in the gun debate
ñ those who wanted to ban handguns, and those who wanted "the
right to own and carry guns more or less at will."
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- Now both sides had found a "third way," he
exulted. Both had agreed that some "common-sense" gun control
was necessary. Sound familiar? Rosenbaum compared the situation to the
fight over health care. Some extremists had wanted to socialize medicine,
he noted, while others had opposed government meddling altogether. Eventually,
we got Medicare and Medicaid, said Rosenbaum ñ the perfect "third-way"
compromise.
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- Or was it? Decades later, Sen. Hillary Clinton is still
demanding national health care. Those who want government out of medicine
altogether have become an extinct species.
-
- When Hitler marched on the Rhineland, the Allies did
nothing. When he took the Sudetenland, they did nothing again. At each
step, the Allies hoped to appease Hitler with "compromise." But
each compromise only brought the Fuhrer closer to his goal.
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- Mr. Lockhartís "third way" is just another
name for the strategy of Fabius Cunctator. It remains to be seen whether
the defenders of gun rights will, like Hannibal, succumb to this ploy or
whether, like the Allies in World War II, they will finally awake to the
danger in the nick of time.
-
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- Richard Poe is editor of FrontPageMagazine.com and SlapHillary.com.
He is the author of "Black Spark, White Fire" and other books.
His latest book, "The Seven Myths of Gun Control," is available
now. For more information about Poe and his work, visit RichardPoe.com.
E-mail: RichardPoe@newsmax.com.
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